It may be time to put NASA brains on some more immediate problems, like alternative energy, and studying the causes of the continuing decline of every ecosystem on earth. Visiting Mars may be a lot nicer knowing that the astronauts have a habitable planet to return to.
The founding fathers did not mean to include non-property owning whites, slaves, women, or heathens in that declaration. Remember, to them, the lower classes were dumb, and certainly not able to govern themselves.
This attitude persists in the minority of America - those at the top, with the money, who don't want anything to change. You can listen for ten minutes to any of their mouth pieces - Hannity, Limbaugh, etc. - and hear that sentiment loud and clear.
I said Republican, because they are the ones who have claimed that they support small government and fiscal responsibility, but couldn't deliver either when they mostly controlled congress for a "brief" ten years and the White House for eight. I won't waste time repeating the figures for you, but the deficit went up, government spending went up, and government grew.
If fiscal responsibility is important, why aren't the same people upset about welfare, education, and medicaid questioning our military budget?
The short answer must be that it's okay to take my money to build nuclear weapons, fighter jets, and to fund CIA operations which have no oversight. But it's not okay to take your money if I want to improve education, ensure health care for all US citizens, or make sure that our elderly receive the care that they deserve.
Regarding the current crisis, it looks like it was caused by forgetting the lessons we learned in the Great Depression. Banks and investment houses and insurers were firewalled apart for a good reason, and when Congress removed those rules in 1999, it set the stage for the credit crisis taking down the entire industry. Markets are susceptible to speculative boom and bust, which is why we have to keep regulations to ease the cycles.
Between 1 and 1.3 trillion dollars has been spent on military projects and war for the last few years, depending on how you look at old debt. The money is not clearly accounted for, against constitutional principles, and it only goes to serve large corporations.
Where is the public outcry? Where are the Republican talking heads when the budget is being discussed?
The bailout plan may be awful, but it's by no means the biggest con ever. The biggest con ever has been going on since the end of WWII, and it has cost American money and lives, and in no small number. Any of these transparently partisan personalities are just squawking for advertising dollars and votes, same as always.
I do think that the defeat of the bill was a sign that we still have influence on our government. This current situation is just a compressed event representing consistent government policy for sixty years.
The problem is, however, that "conservatives" and "democrats" alike have been using paranoia and fear mongering to steal hundreds of billions of dollars from the American people every single year. As of 2001, the Pentagon could not account for 2.3 trillion dollars. Yes, that's trillion. Strangely enough, even Donald Rumsfeld commented on this very topic on September 10th.
This is just as much our fault as it is that of the politicians and corporate leaders, though they are currently in control of the media, and as a result, it's a subject that simply isn't covered. As a culture, we have to make the choice between war and peace, even if that means converting our weapons based economy to something else.
How about spending 100 billion on xprizes for electric cars, halve the military budget, and ending the federal deficit in 10 years?
...private accounts could be very conservatively invested, in things like annuities or municipal bonds...
Which American municipalities? New Orleans? Wagers are wagers, no matter how conservative they seem to be.
But again with that response you're not answering the question; you're just making up excuses for the failed Social(ist) welfare state.
There are at least a dozen socialized medicine programs outperforming the private American system, and of course our (sad) attempt at taking care of our infirm and elderly.
Once again you fail to address the question. I asked about punishing incentive through excessive taxation, and again you can't answer the question.
Read a bit further. If you don't tax the wealthy, they use it to get more wealth, and there is only one piece of economic pie. When you take 10% out of a family of four living on $30k per year, it has a lot more impact than taking 10% more out the same family who is making 300k a year.
As far as incentive goes, I don't think it's hard to find someone who wants to make 300k a year, even if they pay higher taxes. In fact, you could probably lose every CEO in America making more than 1 million per year, replace them with someone making half their salary, and not notice the difference.
I asked Obama for answer, and again you evade because you have no credible response. Besides, Palin isn't the one naively advocating sky high taxes for those making over $250,000 a year in revenue.
Yeah... I had to break up the monotony of your talking points with a laugh. My bad.
Again, if you don't like the tax rate, you should move. Love it or leave it, right? Or does that only count when we're killing arabs...
Really quite mature.
And fucking hilarious!
McCain has distanced himself from the Christian right to a greater extent than Obama has distanced himself from the "religious left."
It's a subjective opinion. The problem is that McCain will be populating his cabinet with graduates from Liberty University, just as Bush did to thank the evangelicals for the election in 2000. That's why the executive is filled with inexperienced, uneducated, and frighteningly unable people, who literally believe that heaven and hell exist, and that Jesus is coming back to end the world real soon now.
Obama doesn't seem like the same kind of shill, but I could be wrong.
You think Fox News and the DailyKOS are at all analogous? You are truly far gone, as is those who bothered to waste mod points on your stupidity.
Their both equally stupid in their own ways, but really... discussing the possibility of Fox News not existing entirely as a right-wing mouth piece isn't a serious topic to anyone not on board with "Hannity's America."
Israel will stop killing so-called "Palestinians"
They are "so-called" because the British encircled the ethnic group called "Palestinians" in a nation called "Palestine" in 1917 which, at the time of it's formation, had 500,000 "Palestinians", 70,000 Christians, and 60,000 Jews.
when they stop making war and committing terrorism against Israel; when they give up their perennial dream of "driving the Jews to the Sea" and perpetrating a second Holocaust.
It's true, there is one difference between Israeli actions and Palestinian threats. Israeli aggression is destroying and killing the Palestinian people actively, and with great success, taking more land from them every year since 1948. Some radical Israelis are demanding that the Palestinians be wiped out completely. Some radical Palestinians demand that Israel be wiped out completely. Any rational person can look at maps from 1948 to the present and see who's doing a better job.
Frannie and Freddie are only part of the problem. The real issue is that we removed the firewalls put in place after the Great Depression, and forgot some basic rules about the market.
1. Self-regulation works as well in Wall Street as it does in the Mafia. 2. Loaning to people who are unqualified is only a problem if the originator is liable in some way. 3. In an unwatched open market, heads of corporations are not geniuses worth their hundred million dollar bonuses. They are white collar thieves with friends on the board and in high places.
Hopefully the next generation will be smarter than us and stick with the basics. Make the loan originators responsible for the loan. Keep the heat on corporate America so they know they will be in jail if they break the law.
Maybe they'll get even smarter and remove the corporate veil for any publicly traded company. That should keep good corporations honest and dishonest corporations small.
Senator Obama, why are you opposed to restructuring Social Security into a system of private accounts...
Social security is secure because it's not tied to the volatile open market.
Senator Obama, given that Medicare is an even bigger drain than Social Security...
Our system is horrible because it is run by lobbyists and big pharma, not because state socialized medicine is bad.
Senator Obama, wouldn't your proposal to nationalize health coverage simply encourage people and companies to drop their current coverage and pile on to the government plan?
They already do... Walmart purposefully pays their employees poorly and refuses to hire them as full time, while providing counselors who can tell them how to get welfare. Why aren't you asking to fine companies like Wal-Mart to actually address the problem instead of turning this issue into a political stunt?
Senator Obama, would your proposal to nationalize health coverage cover non-citizens and thereby represent an additional incentive for illegal immigration?
I'm sorry as hell that your grandfather got in.
Senator Obama, why are you opposed to Health Savings Account plans...
He's opposed to plans that are taxable.
Senator Obama, do you think that soaking the so-called "rich" alone will allow for the funding of your indulgent domestic spending agenda, and what makes you think that you won't be punishing incentive and encouraging the "rich" to work less and even hide more in order to avoid excessive taxation?
McCain is pro military. That's one trillion dollars per year. But it's not actually about the money, is it? And let me say, if you're upset because you'll be required to pay more tax than the less fortunate, and cause you to drive a 5 series instead of a 7 with the 18 inch rims, you're welcome to seek to run your business in another part of the world where the non-rich are the ones who are funding the infrastructure that allow you to live so comfortably.
Taxing the rich more than the poor is fundamental to the health of a relatively open market, otherwise capital only flows upward until you have the type of situation that caused the French Revolution.
Senator Obama, will you commit to balancing the federal budget?
Has anyone done that since the Republicans pledged to, and failed, in the early 90s?
Senator Obama, you claim to want to give the "middle class" a tax cut, but at the same time you propose to raise capital gains taxes, the death tax and corporate taxes...
If major corporations had to pay the full amount of tax, instead of reaping billions of dollars in profit through loopholes, there could be more ways to help small business. The death tax is for assets over 2 million, if I remember correctly. Is that middle class in your book? Must be nice.
Senator Obama, are you familiar with the Laffer Curve?
Ask Palin... please! The comic world is begging you.
Senator Obama, given your radical connections...
Did Hannity shit in your brain? McCain has Falwell, Palin has herself, and Obama knows some black people who feel like they have been screwed by the system. If guilt by association works, why don't you have a problem with Bush holding hands with the King of Saudi Arabia?
Senator Obama, will you repudiate the leftist radicals represented by the sites like dailykos?
Will McCain repudiate Fox News?
Senator Obama, do you support coercing the Israeli government to make more suicidal concessions to its avowed enemies...
Coerce? Does that mean we can say, stop killing Palestinians, arresting them, torturing them, and taking their land with the guns, tanks, helicopters, and jets that we give you, accep
Because they're an authoritarian government that lies all the time?
Name one non-authoritarian government, or even one that tells the truth.
This is almost old hat for Russian and American astronauts (or cosmonauts or whatever). Any country could work with those two space programs and complete a space walk on their own. I wouldn't be surprised if the ESA has already done this as well and I just haven't heard of it. In other words, the third or fourth country doing this isn't a great step forward for all humankind, it's one more country catching up to where other countries were decades ago.
In addition, China's extra space capacity isn't a good thing. Space so far has been nothing but a wagging match between Russia and the US, it's been relatively free of military conflict. If we want space to become something other than a place to conduct science and take some pictures, then increasing China's space capabilities is a great way to start.
China is letting the West know that the militarization of space is a game that they can play as well. The technology required to put a human in space isn't anything to sneeze at. Considering that China's economy was a failure in the same period that we had the Apollo program, it's one of the many signs that they are ready to become the worlds most powerful economy.
We'd do well to recognize real threats, like resource wars involving the militarization of space between world powers, and have some diplomatic summits to address these issues now before they are species threatening. This would require serious politics, which I'm afraid isn't possible in America, especially with viewpoints like the one you just presented.
Russia is going to present their draft UN resolution against the militarization of space on September 29th. It will not be covered in a major way by any American news organization.
Here's an interesting paper from 1989 discussing the topic. It's conclusion: the world must develop a new ethic towards war -- someday -- to avoid the destruction of every major civilization, but until then, the US needs to build weapons for placement in orbit. I'm not sure the writer realized what he was saying.
The bits of magnified image are the only ones that are collected. Then the zoomed bits are stitched together, so you get a clear picture of what is very far away.
Let's say you have an incredibly dumb hypothesis, but you don't want to claim it. Add a question mark, and you can still say the same thing and you can pretend you're still a news organization rather than the National Enquirer.
"Obama is a Muslim" turns into "Is Obama a Muslim?" "Palin Faked Preganancy" turns into "Did Palin Fake Her Pregnancy?"
As with all asinine journalistic methods, this was mainstreamed by Fox News, and covered hilariously by the Daily Show. It's supposed to hook people with outrageous and patently false statements to boost ratings. Instead of information you get speculation, which is worthless.
The last safe haven is NPR. Why? Public funding allows journalists to be journalists and not just the lapdogs of marketing departments. This is also why the BBC remains one of the most trusted news organizations in the world.
I was saying Apple wouldn't pick the legal fight with Efix if there was any chance they could lose and be required to open up their platform.
While we're on the subject, guess when linux wins big? When consumers are forced to live with in their means, and can't keep putting $2000 laptops on their Visa. Choosing between a family vacation and a new iMac isn't going to go in Apple's favor. If they are going to remain relevant in a tough economy, they are going to have to seriously lower their prices, but I think they're about to drop everything by 20% on their next round of updates.
Reading their site, it looks like you can install firmware upgrades... I imagine when you control the boot environment, any attempt to soft-patch the OS won't remain fullproof. If it can be programmed, it can be hacked, right? The only option I see is some TPM implementation
Personally, I hope Apple keeps to their closed platform, as it would put a hard squeeze on Linux if OS X were available on any machine. The chances of this happening are so low that I'm not even worried about it. Apple won't pick the fight if there's an even slight chance they could lose.
Compare the treatment of Obama with that of Palin. She's so incompetent she's not allowed to speak her own words, and anyone who states this fact is decried as sexist. There's media bias that swings right and left as usual, and this time they are at least attempting to be journalists.
I can't in good conscience address sweeping statements that concern the negative highlights of Islamic regimes over the past 1400 years. You can look at the negative highlights of Christians, fascists, communist dictators, and find the same evil. Furthermore, European diplomacy during the Crusades and Ottoman Empire aren't relevant to any discussion about politics in the 21st Century, unless you're discussing the carving that was done after WWI.
What historical evidence are you using to support this idea.
America and Britain have been actively destroying modern arab nationalism since 1910. So, there is no precedent for allowing them to develop their own ideas and to stay out of their sovereign affairs. The reason for this is transparent: the British and US economy and military are dependent on cheap oil. Powerful, independent arab states are a major liability when you're a paranoid western power, and foreigners are sitting on top of "your" resource.
However, we can look at majority muslims societies and see very telling differences between those who serve Washington (Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey) and those who don't (Iran, Iraq after 1991, Algeria, Libya before 2006, Egypt).
Look up what they did to Tunisia back before the turn of the first millenium...
The west has invaded Iraq three times in the last century. Look up for yourself the number of invasions of Grenada, Panama, Egypt, Philippines, Vietnam, Haiti, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador... and those are just the official operations. The CIA has been involved in the destabilization of Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Greece... do I need to continue with murderous states that have received financial support?
You are dilusional if you think talking with Iran will get them to put away their nuclear aspirations.
They have asked for negotiations on that very topic, but we require them to capitulate before we'll even come to the table. Do some real research of the historical record.
Until there are Islamic states that answer to something other than religious institutions, this will not change.
How about Lebanon? Iran? Iraq? Occupied Palestine? They all had secular governments before we interfered.
That is where the Iraq plan has some benefit. If Iraq becomes a western style democracy, maybe the others will see that there is benefit to working WITH you neighbors instead of just feeling compelled to wipe them out.
Maybe when western style democracies work with our neighbors instead of responding with vague threats of nuclear war, they will feel compelled to do the same. The difference being that we have been killing arabs for a century, and they have just had some success in killing Americans. I'm sure if you tally up the dead Arabs from 1908 to 2008, and the dead Americans from the same period, you'll find that we are very much in the lead.
1) Diplomacy with Iran makes academic sense until you start realizing you can't negotiate with a theocracy...
The Iranian negotiating offer, transmitted to the State Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address US concerns about its nuclear program, although it made no specific concession in advance of the talks, according to Flynt Leverett, then the National Security Council's senior director for Middle East Affairs.
Iran's offer also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organization, according to Leverett. That was an explicit response to Powell's demand in late March that Iran "end its support for terrorism".
In 2003, they were willing to come to the table about every important issue, but we don't negotiate unless they cave in before the negotiation. Not a great way to get things done.
2) All candidates broom the past administration.
Nope. The Bush administration wiped out half of the government for political reasons, but older and wiser administrations avoided kicking people with 8 years of experience out the door when it was politically possible. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld have been around since Reagan, with one exception: the Clinton years.
3) Uhh, Rev. Wright? Obama panders to the left's own nutjobs who are as deluded and mistaken as Falwell and the evangelical movement, but they generally aren't religious figures in the traditional sense but secular figures as immersed in their own political theology, whether its the environment, diversity, gay rights, etc.
So, protecting the environment, promoting diversity, and providing gay rights are a bad thing? Is this the ghost of Strom Thurmond, or are you just trolling?
4) Obama's "distaste" for the Clinton dynasty only speaks to his own arrogance and will to power, not to some rational criticism of the Clinton administration. And where does he think he will get any seasoned White House staff members if not from the Clinton administration?
Read your own point in #2. Are you awake? Hungover?
McCain has simply wised up and changed his message enough to win the backing of his party, I don't think anyone seriously doubts he has changed his view on anything fundamentally. His nomination of Sarah Palin shows he's willing to take gutsy moves. Obama's selection of Biden shows his willingness to suck up to the East Coast Democratic Machine.
Right... and what we need in Washington is more self assured evangelicals with no experience telling Russia and Iran that war is our best option. Give me the educated elite any day. They may be corrupt and helping their friends, and they have some catching up to do with the outgoing Republicans, but at least they try to keep us out of diplomatic and military quagmires.
No, he associates with black liberation theology nutcases, which are much worse. By the way, Jerry Falwell is dead.
Please elucidate, in detail, the difference between the idiocy of the Falwell and the 700 club, and "black liberation theology". Keep in mind, over a hundred people who have graduated from Falwell's Law school are in the Bush cabinet. And according to recent statistics, all evangelical private schools perform worse than public schools. I can't imagine the colleges are any better.
Obama is the not change, he's more of the same. More of the same soggy liberal nonsense that has been losing elections in this country for 40 years for good reason.
Ahh. So, you're anti-liberal. I'm okay with that, but are you voting for McCain? If so, why is he allowed to change position? Is it because he changed his worldview to match yours in order to get the Republican nomination?
More class warfare. More mindless entitlements. More appeasement. More tax and spend. More shady politics. More of the same old crap. If you think he's different or new, you're completely deluded.
There are one trillion reasons why "class warfare" is an important issue. Bush is now asking that we spend fifteen years of the Deptartment of Education budget to "fix" the free market. And no one is suggesting we reduce the trillion dollars we spend on the military every year? No one is suggesting that all of the assets held by the management of the corporations the government is nationalizing are seized and sold to offset the expense?
Strange... nothing shady about that... or any relevance to elite corporate interest being served by Washington...
Meanwhile, the child poverty rate in the US is over 20%. The child poverty rate in Denmark is under 3%, and they're closing to having zero national debt. Apparently, it is possible to have a society that takes care of it's citizens in a fiscally responsible fashion. Oh, nevermind.... this is all just soggy liberal nonsense.
These are guesses, or even hopes. I agree that any of the viable candidates are going to serve the corporate interest, but there are important differences.
1. Obama will engage in diplomacy with Iran, and hopefully in covert ways with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the nationalist Iraqi forces. If you're serious about ending terrorism, you have to engage the enemy dipomatically and address the conditions that lead to it. Protip: killing more muslims with western weapons isn't helping. 2. His Administration will sweep out the Bush/Reagan Administration, while McCain would probably keep a lot of it. That's worth my vote right there. 3. Obama does not pander to Jerry Falwell or any of his imitators. It's America, so he has to recognize the religious element, but he doesn't associate with the fundamentalist nutcases. 4. Obama has shown his distaste of the Bush and Clinton Dynasties. Change is good.
Most importantly, Obama is not McCain. McCain has turned from a moderate Republican, who I would have seriously considered voting for in 2000, to a complete shill, pandering to evangelicals, touting proto-fascist military slogans, and most importantly, has shown the same inability to engage in serious self-criticism that has truly frightened the rest of the world in regards to the Bush Administration. McCain also claims to believe that the Iraq war has something to do with counterterrorism or the spread of freedom, which to any serious observer, is total fucking nonsense.
Right wing in the US has, for most of its existence, been isolationist and thus favored less military rather than more. I don't believe there's any connection.
All in all, this research is probably crap.
I agree about the research... we may find some interesting data later on, but easily startled people can still make good decisions after their attention is gained.
But you should read this list - it's non-controversial, and does not include black ops or CIA engagements. America's culture is ruled by fear, repression, and no regard for human rights outside of it's own borders (and now, inside). Our society has evolved, but our government and power structure hasn't.
Interesting speech from Senator Dorgan when the bill, Financial Services Modernization Act, was being discussed '99. Those who don't know history...
"I remember a couple of circumstances that existed more recently. I was not around during the bank failures of the 1930s. I was not around for the debate that persuaded a Congress to enact Glass-Steagall and a range of other protections. But I was here when, in the early 1980s, it was decided that we should expand the opportunities for savings and loans to do certain things. And they began to broker deposits and they took off. They would take a sleepy little savings and loan in some town, and they would take off like a Roman candle. Pretty soon they would have a multibillion-dollar organization, and they would decide they would use that organization to park junk bonds in. We had a savings and loan out in California that had over 50 percent of its assets in risky junk bonds.
Let me describe the ultimate perversion, the hood ornament on stupidity. The U.S. Government owned nonperforming junk bonds in the Taj Mahal Casino. Let me say that again. The U.S. Government ended up owning nonperforming junk bonds in the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. How did that happen? The savings and loans were able to buy junk bonds. The savings and loans went belly up. The junk bonds were not performing. And the U.S. Government ended up with those junk bonds.
Was that a perversion? Of course it was. But it is an example of what has happened when we decide, under a term called modernization, to forget the lessons of the past, to forget there are certain things that are inherently risky, and they ought not be fused or merged with the enterprise of banking that requires the perception and, of course, the reality--but especially the perception--of safety and soundness.
Last year, we had a failure of a firm called LTCM, Long-Term Capital Management. It was an organization run by some of the smartest people in the world, I guess, in the area of finance. They had Nobel laureates helping run this place. They had some of the smartest people on Wall Street. They put together a lot of money. They had this hedge fund, unregulated hedge fund. They had invested more than $1 trillion in derivatives in this fund--more than $1 trillion in derivatives value.
Then, with all of the smartest folks around, and all this money, and an enormous amount of leverage, when it looked as if this firm was going to go belly up, just flat out broke, guess what happened. On a Sunday, Mr. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board decided to convene a meeting of corresponding banks and others who had an interest in this, saying: You have to save Long-Term Capital Management. You have to save this hedge firm. If you don't, there will be catastrophic results in the economy. The hit will be too big.
You have this unregulated risky activity out there in the economy, and you have one firm that has $1 trillion in derivative values and enormous risk, and, with all their brains, it doesn't work. They are going to go belly up. Who bears the burden of that? The Federal Government, the Federal Reserve Board.
We have the GAO doing an investigation to find out the circumstances of all that. I am very interested in this no-fault capitalism that exists with respect to Long-Term Capital Management. Who decides what kind of capitalism is no-fault capitalism? And when and how and is there a conflict of interest here?
The reason I raise this point is, this will be replicated again and again and again, as long as we bring bills to the floor that talk about financial services modernization and refuse to deal with the issue of thoughtful and sensible regulation of things such as hedge funds and derivatives and as long as we bring bills to the floor that say we can connect and couple, we can actually hitch up, inherently risky enterprises with the core banking issues in this country.
I hear about fire walls and affiliates, all these issues. I probably know less about them than some others;
Can we dispense with these comments that question a new technology if the implementation doesn't take into account common sense?
I wouldn't build a below ground data center in New Orleans or a solar power plant in Seattle or a hydroelectric dam in the Sahara. If you're within a flood plain, who builds underground, besides every single skyscraper in NYC?
So, it could be done - if your engineering takes into account common sense, that is.
Part of the problem is people are looking for very complicated solutions for very simple problems.
In retrofitting a standalone building, all you really need to do is reduce the amount of heat a building gains from the sun by improving it's R value and use sensible ducting to draw air through the building. I've seen some super energy efficient designs where each floor is vented, so that the building is itself a chimney, with cool air coming from vents from covered areas near the base, and enough size provided at the top to pull enough from the bottom, which is also easily aided by fans.
In building an entirely new datacenter, it would make sense to bury the server rooms, and cover the concrete structure with earth and solar panels. Combined with a flywheel load balancer, you could have an "off the grid" datacenter with the grid for backup. During the daylight hours, especially in the south, the panels can provide a good deal of the A/C and power necessary. At night the flywheel can continue powering the data center for a while, and turn fans without compressors to cool the equipment with night air.
This can all be done with existing technology. The trick is to convince people that green investment will lead to a return in the long run. I haven't personally looked at average rate increases in electricity, but the difference between efficient and additional construction expenses versus long term energy price fluctuations probably looks very good.
No fan of celebrities either, but have you you ever seen Sean Hannity's America? Check out his bits on Holy Water and weeping statues. If you're not laughing hysterically, then you're his target audience. God help you.
The rules that were put in place after the Great Depression were undone by Phil Gram (remember the "nation of whiners" guy?) and a corporate friendly congress. Surprise surprise, they turned the newly freed and unwatched credit market into a ten trillion dollar casino, and now the American tax payer will have to bail them out.
The next time anyone pushes for privatization, remember what they really want is to use taxpayer money for private benefit. Our answer should be no; corporate culture has proved time and time again that they are incapable of handling their own business. The free market works only when it is well regulated and continually redistributes wealth from richest to poorest.
The free market for me, and a great majority of society if you avoid tainted language, means that society benefits from the sharing of a strong infrastructure and equal access to health, education, and national resources. The "free market" as defined today means welfare for corporations, and an admonishment to "chin up" and "lift yourself up by your own bootstraps" if you're an individual.
No, it's that they are ecumenical in their support of notorious criminals as long as they're acting on our behalf. Then they are some how surprised when the same criminals don't do exactly as we tell them with the power we helped them attain.
I have no evidence to suggest that the CIA directly trained Osama bin Laden. However, they did train, supply, and encourage an extreme Islamic worldview in order to bleed the Russians in Afghanistan, and we are suffering the consequences now. The direct training isn't really consequential, but the fact that it would be unsurprising should concern anyone with the feeblest of moral values.
Slashdot Mirror
It may be time to put NASA brains on some more immediate problems, like alternative energy, and studying the causes of the continuing decline of every ecosystem on earth. Visiting Mars may be a lot nicer knowing that the astronauts have a habitable planet to return to.
The founding fathers did not mean to include non-property owning whites, slaves, women, or heathens in that declaration. Remember, to them, the lower classes were dumb, and certainly not able to govern themselves.
This attitude persists in the minority of America - those at the top, with the money, who don't want anything to change. You can listen for ten minutes to any of their mouth pieces - Hannity, Limbaugh, etc. - and hear that sentiment loud and clear.
I said Republican, because they are the ones who have claimed that they support small government and fiscal responsibility, but couldn't deliver either when they mostly controlled congress for a "brief" ten years and the White House for eight. I won't waste time repeating the figures for you, but the deficit went up, government spending went up, and government grew.
If fiscal responsibility is important, why aren't the same people upset about welfare, education, and medicaid questioning our military budget?
The short answer must be that it's okay to take my money to build nuclear weapons, fighter jets, and to fund CIA operations which have no oversight. But it's not okay to take your money if I want to improve education, ensure health care for all US citizens, or make sure that our elderly receive the care that they deserve.
Regarding the current crisis, it looks like it was caused by forgetting the lessons we learned in the Great Depression. Banks and investment houses and insurers were firewalled apart for a good reason, and when Congress removed those rules in 1999, it set the stage for the credit crisis taking down the entire industry. Markets are susceptible to speculative boom and bust, which is why we have to keep regulations to ease the cycles.
Between 1 and 1.3 trillion dollars has been spent on military projects and war for the last few years, depending on how you look at old debt. The money is not clearly accounted for, against constitutional principles, and it only goes to serve large corporations.
Where is the public outcry? Where are the Republican talking heads when the budget is being discussed?
The bailout plan may be awful, but it's by no means the biggest con ever. The biggest con ever has been going on since the end of WWII, and it has cost American money and lives, and in no small number. Any of these transparently partisan personalities are just squawking for advertising dollars and votes, same as always.
I do think that the defeat of the bill was a sign that we still have influence on our government. This current situation is just a compressed event representing consistent government policy for sixty years.
The problem is, however, that "conservatives" and "democrats" alike have been using paranoia and fear mongering to steal hundreds of billions of dollars from the American people every single year. As of 2001, the Pentagon could not account for 2.3 trillion dollars. Yes, that's trillion. Strangely enough, even Donald Rumsfeld commented on this very topic on September 10th.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRqeJcuK-A&feature=related
(with some relevant clips)
This is just as much our fault as it is that of the politicians and corporate leaders, though they are currently in control of the media, and as a result, it's a subject that simply isn't covered. As a culture, we have to make the choice between war and peace, even if that means converting our weapons based economy to something else.
How about spending 100 billion on xprizes for electric cars, halve the military budget, and ending the federal deficit in 10 years?
...private accounts could be very conservatively invested, in things like annuities or municipal bonds...
Which American municipalities? New Orleans? Wagers are wagers, no matter how conservative they seem to be.
But again with that response you're not answering the question; you're just making up excuses for the failed Social(ist) welfare state.
There are at least a dozen socialized medicine programs outperforming the private American system, and of course our (sad) attempt at taking care of our infirm and elderly.
Once again you fail to address the question. I asked about punishing incentive through excessive taxation, and again you can't answer the question.
Read a bit further. If you don't tax the wealthy, they use it to get more wealth, and there is only one piece of economic pie. When you take 10% out of a family of four living on $30k per year, it has a lot more impact than taking 10% more out the same family who is making 300k a year.
As far as incentive goes, I don't think it's hard to find someone who wants to make 300k a year, even if they pay higher taxes. In fact, you could probably lose every CEO in America making more than 1 million per year, replace them with someone making half their salary, and not notice the difference.
I asked Obama for answer, and again you evade because you have no credible response. Besides, Palin isn't the one naively advocating sky high taxes for those making over $250,000 a year in revenue.
Yeah... I had to break up the monotony of your talking points with a laugh. My bad.
Again, if you don't like the tax rate, you should move. Love it or leave it, right? Or does that only count when we're killing arabs...
Really quite mature.
And fucking hilarious!
McCain has distanced himself from the Christian right to a greater extent than Obama has distanced himself from the "religious left."
It's a subjective opinion. The problem is that McCain will be populating his cabinet with graduates from Liberty University, just as Bush did to thank the evangelicals for the election in 2000. That's why the executive is filled with inexperienced, uneducated, and frighteningly unable people, who literally believe that heaven and hell exist, and that Jesus is coming back to end the world real soon now.
Obama doesn't seem like the same kind of shill, but I could be wrong.
You think Fox News and the DailyKOS are at all analogous? You are truly far gone, as is those who bothered to waste mod points on your stupidity.
Their both equally stupid in their own ways, but really... discussing the possibility of Fox News not existing entirely as a right-wing mouth piece isn't a serious topic to anyone not on board with "Hannity's America."
Israel will stop killing so-called "Palestinians"
They are "so-called" because the British encircled the ethnic group called "Palestinians" in a nation called "Palestine" in 1917 which, at the time of it's formation, had 500,000 "Palestinians", 70,000 Christians, and 60,000 Jews.
when they stop making war and committing terrorism against Israel; when they give up their perennial dream of "driving the Jews to the Sea" and perpetrating a second Holocaust.
It's true, there is one difference between Israeli actions and Palestinian threats. Israeli aggression is destroying and killing the Palestinian people actively, and with great success, taking more land from them every year since 1948. Some radical Israelis are demanding that the Palestinians be wiped out completely. Some radical Palestinians demand that Israel be wiped out completely. Any rational person can look at maps from 1948 to the present and see who's doing a better job.
As for "taking their land," it
Frannie and Freddie are only part of the problem. The real issue is that we removed the firewalls put in place after the Great Depression, and forgot some basic rules about the market.
1. Self-regulation works as well in Wall Street as it does in the Mafia.
2. Loaning to people who are unqualified is only a problem if the originator is liable in some way.
3. In an unwatched open market, heads of corporations are not geniuses worth their hundred million dollar bonuses. They are white collar thieves with friends on the board and in high places.
Hopefully the next generation will be smarter than us and stick with the basics. Make the loan originators responsible for the loan. Keep the heat on corporate America so they know they will be in jail if they break the law.
Maybe they'll get even smarter and remove the corporate veil for any publicly traded company. That should keep good corporations honest and dishonest corporations small.
Senator Obama, why are you opposed to restructuring Social Security into a system of private accounts...
Social security is secure because it's not tied to the volatile open market.
Senator Obama, given that Medicare is an even bigger drain than Social Security...
Our system is horrible because it is run by lobbyists and big pharma, not because state socialized medicine is bad.
Senator Obama, wouldn't your proposal to nationalize health coverage simply encourage people and companies to drop their current coverage and pile on to the government plan?
They already do... Walmart purposefully pays their employees poorly and refuses to hire them as full time, while providing counselors who can tell them how to get welfare. Why aren't you asking to fine companies like Wal-Mart to actually address the problem instead of turning this issue into a political stunt?
Senator Obama, would your proposal to nationalize health coverage cover non-citizens and thereby represent an additional incentive for illegal immigration?
I'm sorry as hell that your grandfather got in.
Senator Obama, why are you opposed to Health Savings Account plans...
He's opposed to plans that are taxable.
Senator Obama, do you think that soaking the so-called "rich" alone will allow for the funding of your indulgent domestic spending agenda, and what makes you think that you won't be punishing incentive and encouraging the "rich" to work less and even hide more in order to avoid excessive taxation?
McCain is pro military. That's one trillion dollars per year. But it's not actually about the money, is it? And let me say, if you're upset because you'll be required to pay more tax than the less fortunate, and cause you to drive a 5 series instead of a 7 with the 18 inch rims, you're welcome to seek to run your business in another part of the world where the non-rich are the ones who are funding the infrastructure that allow you to live so comfortably.
Taxing the rich more than the poor is fundamental to the health of a relatively open market, otherwise capital only flows upward until you have the type of situation that caused the French Revolution.
Senator Obama, will you commit to balancing the federal budget?
Has anyone done that since the Republicans pledged to, and failed, in the early 90s?
Senator Obama, you claim to want to give the "middle class" a tax cut, but at the same time you propose to raise capital gains taxes, the death tax and corporate taxes...
If major corporations had to pay the full amount of tax, instead of reaping billions of dollars in profit through loopholes, there could be more ways to help small business. The death tax is for assets over 2 million, if I remember correctly. Is that middle class in your book? Must be nice.
Senator Obama, are you familiar with the Laffer Curve?
Ask Palin... please! The comic world is begging you.
Senator Obama, given your radical connections...
Did Hannity shit in your brain? McCain has Falwell, Palin has herself, and Obama knows some black people who feel like they have been screwed by the system. If guilt by association works, why don't you have a problem with Bush holding hands with the King of Saudi Arabia?
Senator Obama, will you repudiate the leftist radicals represented by the sites like dailykos?
Will McCain repudiate Fox News?
Senator Obama, do you support coercing the Israeli government to make more suicidal concessions to its avowed enemies...
Coerce? Does that mean we can say, stop killing Palestinians, arresting them, torturing them, and taking their land with the guns, tanks, helicopters, and jets that we give you, accep
Why are all posts so anti-chinese?
Because they're an authoritarian government that lies all the time?
Name one non-authoritarian government, or even one that tells the truth.
This is almost old hat for Russian and American astronauts (or cosmonauts or whatever). Any country could work with those two space programs and complete a space walk on their own. I wouldn't be surprised if the ESA has already done this as well and I just haven't heard of it. In other words, the third or fourth country doing this isn't a great step forward for all humankind, it's one more country catching up to where other countries were decades ago.
In addition, China's extra space capacity isn't a good thing. Space so far has been nothing but a wagging match between Russia and the US, it's been relatively free of military conflict. If we want space to become something other than a place to conduct science and take some pictures, then increasing China's space capabilities is a great way to start.
China is letting the West know that the militarization of space is a game that they can play as well. The technology required to put a human in space isn't anything to sneeze at. Considering that China's economy was a failure in the same period that we had the Apollo program, it's one of the many signs that they are ready to become the worlds most powerful economy.
We'd do well to recognize real threats, like resource wars involving the militarization of space between world powers, and have some diplomatic summits to address these issues now before they are species threatening. This would require serious politics, which I'm afraid isn't possible in America, especially with viewpoints like the one you just presented.
Russia is going to present their draft UN resolution against the militarization of space on September 29th. It will not be covered in a major way by any American news organization.
Here's an interesting paper from 1989 discussing the topic. It's conclusion: the world must develop a new ethic towards war -- someday -- to avoid the destruction of every major civilization, but until then, the US needs to build weapons for placement in orbit. I'm not sure the writer realized what he was saying.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/1989/DCA.htm
The bits of magnified image are the only ones that are collected. Then the zoomed bits are stitched together, so you get a clear picture of what is very far away.
Let's say you have an incredibly dumb hypothesis, but you don't want to claim it. Add a question mark, and you can still say the same thing and you can pretend you're still a news organization rather than the National Enquirer.
"Obama is a Muslim" turns into "Is Obama a Muslim?"
"Palin Faked Preganancy" turns into "Did Palin Fake Her Pregnancy?"
As with all asinine journalistic methods, this was mainstreamed by Fox News, and covered hilariously by the Daily Show. It's supposed to hook people with outrageous and patently false statements to boost ratings. Instead of information you get speculation, which is worthless.
The last safe haven is NPR. Why? Public funding allows journalists to be journalists and not just the lapdogs of marketing departments. This is also why the BBC remains one of the most trusted news organizations in the world.
Mmm. Need coffee.
I was saying Apple wouldn't pick the legal fight with Efix if there was any chance they could lose and be required to open up their platform.
While we're on the subject, guess when linux wins big? When consumers are forced to live with in their means, and can't keep putting $2000 laptops on their Visa. Choosing between a family vacation and a new iMac isn't going to go in Apple's favor. If they are going to remain relevant in a tough economy, they are going to have to seriously lower their prices, but I think they're about to drop everything by 20% on their next round of updates.
Reading their site, it looks like you can install firmware upgrades... I imagine when you control the boot environment, any attempt to soft-patch the OS won't remain fullproof. If it can be programmed, it can be hacked, right? The only option I see is some TPM implementation
http://www.efi-x.com/index.php?language=english
Personally, I hope Apple keeps to their closed platform, as it would put a hard squeeze on Linux if OS X were available on any machine. The chances of this happening are so low that I'm not even worried about it. Apple won't pick the fight if there's an even slight chance they could lose.
The guy is so hypocritical he's self defeating, so let him speak for himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI
All of those quotes are in context.
Compare the treatment of Obama with that of Palin. She's so incompetent she's not allowed to speak her own words, and anyone who states this fact is decried as sexist. There's media bias that swings right and left as usual, and this time they are at least attempting to be journalists.
I can't in good conscience address sweeping statements that concern the negative highlights of Islamic regimes over the past 1400 years. You can look at the negative highlights of Christians, fascists, communist dictators, and find the same evil. Furthermore, European diplomacy during the Crusades and Ottoman Empire aren't relevant to any discussion about politics in the 21st Century, unless you're discussing the carving that was done after WWI.
What historical evidence are you using to support this idea.
America and Britain have been actively destroying modern arab nationalism since 1910. So, there is no precedent for allowing them to develop their own ideas and to stay out of their sovereign affairs. The reason for this is transparent: the British and US economy and military are dependent on cheap oil. Powerful, independent arab states are a major liability when you're a paranoid western power, and foreigners are sitting on top of "your" resource.
However, we can look at majority muslims societies and see very telling differences between those who serve Washington (Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey) and those who don't (Iran, Iraq after 1991, Algeria, Libya before 2006, Egypt).
Look up what they did to Tunisia back before the turn of the first millenium...
The west has invaded Iraq three times in the last century. Look up for yourself the number of invasions of Grenada, Panama, Egypt, Philippines, Vietnam, Haiti, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador... and those are just the official operations. The CIA has been involved in the destabilization of Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Greece... do I need to continue with murderous states that have received financial support?
You are dilusional if you think talking with Iran will get them to put away their nuclear aspirations.
They have asked for negotiations on that very topic, but we require them to capitulate before we'll even come to the table. Do some real research of the historical record.
Until there are Islamic states that answer to something other than religious institutions, this will not change.
How about Lebanon? Iran? Iraq? Occupied Palestine? They all had secular governments before we interfered.
That is where the Iraq plan has some benefit. If Iraq becomes a western style democracy, maybe the others will see that there is benefit to working WITH you neighbors instead of just feeling compelled to wipe them out.
Maybe when western style democracies work with our neighbors instead of responding with vague threats of nuclear war, they will feel compelled to do the same. The difference being that we have been killing arabs for a century, and they have just had some success in killing Americans. I'm sure if you tally up the dead Arabs from 1908 to 2008, and the dead Americans from the same period, you'll find that we are very much in the lead.
1) Diplomacy with Iran makes academic sense until you start realizing you can't negotiate with a theocracy...
The Iranian negotiating offer, transmitted to the State Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address US concerns about its nuclear program, although it made no specific concession in advance of the talks, according to Flynt Leverett, then the National Security Council's senior director for Middle East Affairs.
Iran's offer also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organization, according to Leverett. That was an explicit response to Powell's demand in late March that Iran "end its support for terrorism".
In 2003, they were willing to come to the table about every important issue, but we don't negotiate unless they cave in before the negotiation. Not a great way to get things done.
2) All candidates broom the past administration.
Nope. The Bush administration wiped out half of the government for political reasons, but older and wiser administrations avoided kicking people with 8 years of experience out the door when it was politically possible. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld have been around since Reagan, with one exception: the Clinton years.
3) Uhh, Rev. Wright? Obama panders to the left's own nutjobs who are as deluded and mistaken as Falwell and the evangelical movement, but they generally aren't religious figures in the traditional sense but secular figures as immersed in their own political theology, whether its the environment, diversity, gay rights, etc.
So, protecting the environment, promoting diversity, and providing gay rights are a bad thing? Is this the ghost of Strom Thurmond, or are you just trolling?
4) Obama's "distaste" for the Clinton dynasty only speaks to his own arrogance and will to power, not to some rational criticism of the Clinton administration. And where does he think he will get any seasoned White House staff members if not from the Clinton administration?
Read your own point in #2. Are you awake? Hungover?
McCain has simply wised up and changed his message enough to win the backing of his party, I don't think anyone seriously doubts he has changed his view on anything fundamentally. His nomination of Sarah Palin shows he's willing to take gutsy moves. Obama's selection of Biden shows his willingness to suck up to the East Coast Democratic Machine.
Right... and what we need in Washington is more self assured evangelicals with no experience telling Russia and Iran that war is our best option. Give me the educated elite any day. They may be corrupt and helping their friends, and they have some catching up to do with the outgoing Republicans, but at least they try to keep us out of diplomatic and military quagmires.
No, he associates with black liberation theology nutcases, which are much worse. By the way, Jerry Falwell is dead.
Please elucidate, in detail, the difference between the idiocy of the Falwell and the 700 club, and "black liberation theology". Keep in mind, over a hundred people who have graduated from Falwell's Law school are in the Bush cabinet. And according to recent statistics, all evangelical private schools perform worse than public schools. I can't imagine the colleges are any better.
Obama is the not change, he's more of the same. More of the same soggy liberal nonsense that has been losing elections in this country for 40 years for good reason.
Ahh. So, you're anti-liberal. I'm okay with that, but are you voting for McCain? If so, why is he allowed to change position? Is it because he changed his worldview to match yours in order to get the Republican nomination?
More class warfare. More mindless entitlements. More appeasement. More tax and spend. More shady politics. More of the same old crap. If you think he's different or new, you're completely deluded.
There are one trillion reasons why "class warfare" is an important issue. Bush is now asking that we spend fifteen years of the Deptartment of Education budget to "fix" the free market. And no one is suggesting we reduce the trillion dollars we spend on the military every year? No one is suggesting that all of the assets held by the management of the corporations the government is nationalizing are seized and sold to offset the expense?
Strange... nothing shady about that... or any relevance to elite corporate interest being served by Washington...
Meanwhile, the child poverty rate in the US is over 20%. The child poverty rate in Denmark is under 3%, and they're closing to having zero national debt. Apparently, it is possible to have a society that takes care of it's citizens in a fiscally responsible fashion. Oh, nevermind.... this is all just soggy liberal nonsense.
These are guesses, or even hopes. I agree that any of the viable candidates are going to serve the corporate interest, but there are important differences.
1. Obama will engage in diplomacy with Iran, and hopefully in covert ways with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the nationalist Iraqi forces. If you're serious about ending terrorism, you have to engage the enemy dipomatically and address the conditions that lead to it. Protip: killing more muslims with western weapons isn't helping.
2. His Administration will sweep out the Bush/Reagan Administration, while McCain would probably keep a lot of it. That's worth my vote right there.
3. Obama does not pander to Jerry Falwell or any of his imitators. It's America, so he has to recognize the religious element, but he doesn't associate with the fundamentalist nutcases.
4. Obama has shown his distaste of the Bush and Clinton Dynasties. Change is good.
Most importantly, Obama is not McCain. McCain has turned from a moderate Republican, who I would have seriously considered voting for in 2000, to a complete shill, pandering to evangelicals, touting proto-fascist military slogans, and most importantly, has shown the same inability to engage in serious self-criticism that has truly frightened the rest of the world in regards to the Bush Administration. McCain also claims to believe that the Iraq war has something to do with counterterrorism or the spread of freedom, which to any serious observer, is total fucking nonsense.
Right wing in the US has, for most of its existence, been isolationist and thus favored less military rather than more. I don't believe there's any connection.
All in all, this research is probably crap.
I agree about the research... we may find some interesting data later on, but easily startled people can still make good decisions after their attention is gained.
But you should read this list - it's non-controversial, and does not include black ops or CIA engagements. America's culture is ruled by fear, repression, and no regard for human rights outside of it's own borders (and now, inside). Our society has evolved, but our government and power structure hasn't.
Interesting speech from Senator Dorgan when the bill, Financial Services Modernization Act, was being discussed '99. Those who don't know history...
"I remember a couple of circumstances that existed more recently. I was not around during the bank failures of the 1930s. I was not around for the debate that persuaded a Congress to enact Glass-Steagall and a range of other protections. But I was here when, in the early 1980s, it was decided that we should expand the opportunities for savings and loans to do certain things. And they began to broker deposits and they took off. They would take a sleepy little savings and loan in some town, and they would take off like a Roman candle. Pretty soon they would have a multibillion-dollar organization, and they would decide they would use that organization to park junk bonds in. We had a savings and loan out in California that had over 50 percent of its assets in risky junk bonds.
Let me describe the ultimate perversion, the hood ornament on stupidity. The U.S. Government owned nonperforming junk bonds in the Taj Mahal Casino. Let me say that again. The U.S. Government ended up owning nonperforming junk bonds in the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. How did that happen? The savings and loans were able to buy junk bonds. The savings and loans went belly up. The junk bonds were not performing. And the U.S. Government ended up with those junk bonds.
Was that a perversion? Of course it was. But it is an example of what has happened when we decide, under a term called modernization, to forget the lessons of the past, to forget there are certain things that are inherently risky, and they ought not be fused or merged with the enterprise of banking that requires the perception and, of course, the reality--but especially the perception--of safety and soundness.
Last year, we had a failure of a firm called LTCM, Long-Term Capital Management. It was an organization run by some of the smartest people in the world, I guess, in the area of finance. They had Nobel laureates helping run this place. They had some of the smartest people on Wall Street. They put together a lot of money. They had this hedge fund, unregulated hedge fund. They had invested more than $1 trillion in derivatives in this fund--more than $1 trillion in derivatives value.
Then, with all of the smartest folks around, and all this money, and an enormous amount of leverage, when it looked as if this firm was going to go belly up, just flat out broke, guess what happened. On a Sunday, Mr. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board decided to convene a meeting of corresponding banks and others who had an interest in this, saying: You have to save Long-Term Capital Management. You have to save this hedge firm. If you don't, there will be catastrophic results in the economy. The hit will be too big.
You have this unregulated risky activity out there in the economy, and you have one firm that has $1 trillion in derivative values and enormous risk, and, with all their brains, it doesn't work. They are going to go belly up. Who bears the burden of that? The Federal Government, the Federal Reserve Board.
We have the GAO doing an investigation to find out the circumstances of all that. I am very interested in this no-fault capitalism that exists with respect to Long-Term Capital Management. Who decides what kind of capitalism is no-fault capitalism? And when and how and is there a conflict of interest here?
The reason I raise this point is, this will be replicated again and again and again, as long as we bring bills to the floor that talk about financial services modernization and refuse to deal with the issue of thoughtful and sensible regulation of things such as hedge funds and derivatives and as long as we bring bills to the floor that say we can connect and couple, we can actually hitch up, inherently risky enterprises with the core banking issues in this country.
I hear about fire walls and affiliates, all these issues. I probably know less about them than some others;
Can we dispense with these comments that question a new technology if the implementation doesn't take into account common sense?
I wouldn't build a below ground data center in New Orleans or a solar power plant in Seattle or a hydroelectric dam in the Sahara. If you're within a flood plain, who builds underground, besides every single skyscraper in NYC?
So, it could be done - if your engineering takes into account common sense, that is.
Part of the problem is people are looking for very complicated solutions for very simple problems.
In retrofitting a standalone building, all you really need to do is reduce the amount of heat a building gains from the sun by improving it's R value and use sensible ducting to draw air through the building. I've seen some super energy efficient designs where each floor is vented, so that the building is itself a chimney, with cool air coming from vents from covered areas near the base, and enough size provided at the top to pull enough from the bottom, which is also easily aided by fans.
In building an entirely new datacenter, it would make sense to bury the server rooms, and cover the concrete structure with earth and solar panels. Combined with a flywheel load balancer, you could have an "off the grid" datacenter with the grid for backup. During the daylight hours, especially in the south, the panels can provide a good deal of the A/C and power necessary. At night the flywheel can continue powering the data center for a while, and turn fans without compressors to cool the equipment with night air.
This can all be done with existing technology. The trick is to convince people that green investment will lead to a return in the long run. I haven't personally looked at average rate increases in electricity, but the difference between efficient and additional construction expenses versus long term energy price fluctuations probably looks very good.
No fan of celebrities either, but have you you ever seen Sean Hannity's America? Check out his bits on Holy Water and weeping statues. If you're not laughing hysterically, then you're his target audience. God help you.
The rules that were put in place after the Great Depression were undone by Phil Gram (remember the "nation of whiners" guy?) and a corporate friendly congress. Surprise surprise, they turned the newly freed and unwatched credit market into a ten trillion dollar casino, and now the American tax payer will have to bail them out.
The next time anyone pushes for privatization, remember what they really want is to use taxpayer money for private benefit. Our answer should be no; corporate culture has proved time and time again that they are incapable of handling their own business. The free market works only when it is well regulated and continually redistributes wealth from richest to poorest.
The free market for me, and a great majority of society if you avoid tainted language, means that society benefits from the sharing of a strong infrastructure and equal access to health, education, and national resources. The "free market" as defined today means welfare for corporations, and an admonishment to "chin up" and "lift yourself up by your own bootstraps" if you're an individual.
No, it's that they are ecumenical in their support of notorious criminals as long as they're acting on our behalf. Then they are some how surprised when the same criminals don't do exactly as we tell them with the power we helped them attain.
I have no evidence to suggest that the CIA directly trained Osama bin Laden. However, they did train, supply, and encourage an extreme Islamic worldview in order to bleed the Russians in Afghanistan, and we are suffering the consequences now. The direct training isn't really consequential, but the fact that it would be unsurprising should concern anyone with the feeblest of moral values.